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25 July 2008

 

A line from Obama's Berlin speech:

This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet. Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands. Let us resolve that all nations - including my own - will act with the same seriousness of purpose as has your nation, and reduce the carbon we send into our atmosphere. This is the moment to give our children back their future. This is the moment to stand as one.

Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.
-- Aldous Huxley

posted by Lorenzo 9:10 PM

23 July 2008

 

People like Richie Jackson amaze me ... BRAVO!!!

posted by Lorenzo 12:00 PM

16 July 2008

 

Get Ready for the Next BIG SHOCK

Between now and the elections this coming November, I think we can expect some sort of crisis to engulf us on a national level. So just get used to the idea. That way you won't be knocked off your pins when the goons in Washington provoke their next big shock. IMHO, no one has a better handle on this than does Naomi Klein.

posted by Lorenzo 10:44 AM

07 July 2008

 

Doug Stanhope - This Generation Sucks
Now that I've become disenchanted with Obama because I think he's too conservative (i.e., old fashioned), I've been avoiding politics and looking for laughs instead. So I did a Google search for "comedian drug marijuana" and found Doug Stanhope, who has now added years back to my life by making me laugh. In this bit he echos my sentiments about young yuppies even though he must be half my age. So imagine how painfully true this bit is for a dusty old fart like me. (Full Disclosure: I retired from Verizon ... just listen the end :-) .)

posted by Lorenzo 8:12 PM

03 July 2008

 

Deception in Obama's new statement on FISA
(Glenn Greenwald, July 3, 2008)
Barack Obama has issued a new statement on FISA in response to the growing number of his supporters objecting to his position. . . . the statement contains many dubious claims and, in a couple cases, outright misleading statements. Worse, Obama's statement only addressed the objections to the telecom immunity provisions of the bill, while ignoring the objections to the (at least) equally pernicious new warrantless eavesdropping powers the bill authorizes. . . . Obama says he will vote to remove immunity from the bill but knows full well that this effort will fail, and that the final bill will have telecom immunity in it. The bottom line is that he will nonetheless end up voting for this bill with immunity in it even though he previously vowed to support a filibuster of "any bill" that contains retroactive immunity. Put another way, Obama claims he opposes telecom immunity but will vote for a bill that grants it. . . . Whether it's better than the Protect America Act (PAA) is irrelevant. The PAA already expired last February. If the new FISA bill is rejected, we don't revert back to the Protect America Act. We just continue to live under the same FISA law that we've lived under for 30 years (with numerous post-9/11 modernizing amendments). So whether this bill is a mild improvement over the atrocious, expired PAA is not even a coherent reason to support it, let alone a persuasive one. . . . The government already has "the authority to collect the intelligence it needs to protect the American people." That authority is called FISA, which already allows the Government extremely broad authority to spy on any suspected terrorists. The current law results in virtually no denials of any spying requests. So how can Obama -- echoing the Bush administration -- claim a new law is needed to provide "the authority to collect the intelligence we need to protect the American people" when the current FISA law already provides that? . . . The new FISA bill that Obama supports vests new categories of warrantless eavesdropping powers in the President, and allows the Government, for the first time, to tap physically into U.S. telecommunications networks inside our country with no individual warrant requirement. To claim that this new bill creates "an independent monitor [to] watch the watchers to prevent abuses and to protect the civil liberties of the American people" is truly misleading, since the new FISA bill actually does the opposite -- it frees the Government from exactly that monitoring in all sorts of broad categories. . . . Why else would Bush and Cheney be so eager to have this bill if it didn't substantially expand the Government's ability to eavesdrop without warrants?

posted by Lorenzo 9:07 PM